You can’t make this stuff up

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You really can’t make this stuff up. Very often I will peruse the newspapers, weekly
newsmagazines, and internet news sites for interesting or unusual topical stories on which I
might comment in this column. Here are a couple I found this week.

* Robert Kosilek, a man who is serving a life sentence in prison for the murder of his
wife, is asking a federal judge to order the state to pay for a sex-change operation for him.
He claims that denying him the surgery amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. A shrink has
testified that he believes Kosilek will commit suicide if the correctional officials don’t
allow the surgery. He has already changed his name – he is known as “Michelle” around the old
prison yard.

Back in 2002, U.S. District Judge Mark Wolf ruled that this creep was entitled to
treatment for “gender identity disorder.” So from then on, he was given female hormone
treatments and laser hair removal along with his psychotherapy – all paid for by tax payers, of
course. Another genius judge strikes again.

But here’s the kicker to the whole thing, the reason that the Department of Corrections
stopped short of the sex-change surgery is because they don’t know where to put him after his
sex is changed! Officials are concerned that if Kosilek has the surgery and returns as a woman
to the all-male, medium-security prison in Norfolk where he is now serving his sentence, well,
he might be assaulted by male inmates. On the other hand, if he is transferred to the women's
prison in Framingham, they’re worried that he might pose a risk to female inmates there (since
after all, he did kill his wife once). This is indeed a real conundrum.

If I were the king of the world, this is what I would do:

1. NOT allow the guy to have his operation (which would save the state a lot of money).

2. Let the wack-job go ahead and off himself (which would save the state even more money and
rid the world of a sick murderous slime ball).

3. Kick the imbecilic judge who originally allowed this bum to get female hormone injections at
taxpayer expense off the bench.

Problem solved.

* After two weeks digging up a Detroit horse farm the FBI announced that it didn’t find
Jimmy Hoffa. The dig involved dozens of agents along with archaeologists, anthropologists, and
a demolition crew that destroyed a barn. The agency said that the tip that led them to the
farm was the best they’d gotten since 1976. FBI officials believe Hoffa, who disappeared in
1975, had been buried on the farm. The farm was owed at the time by a Hoffa associate and was
supposedly a mob meeting place.

There have been other places around the Detroit area that have been searched by FBI
investigators looking for Hoffa’s body in recent years. In 2003 they dug under a backyard pool
at a home north of Detroit for clues to the missing union leader. They didn’t find Jimmy
Hoffa. In 2004 cops torn up floorboards in a Detroit house to test bloodstains – the blood
turned out not to be Hoffa’s. Over the years, theories of where Hoffa might have been buried
could fill volumes. The speculation runs the gamut from being ground up and thrown into a
Florida swamp to being liquefied in a mob-owned fat-rendering plant to being buried at Giants
Stadium in the New Jersey Meadowlands.

Personally I think Hoffa is still alive. I’ve heard that he and Elvis are half-owners
in a Krispy Kreme franchise in a small shopping mall just a mile or so out of Tulsa. But I
could be wrong, so don’t say anything to the FBI. I wouldn’t want to see a Krispy Kreme store
get trashed for nothing.

I must say, though, it does my heart good to know that in the year 2006, in the wake of
9/11, with terrorists across the globe trying to kill us and security issues still a problem at
our ports and at our borders, some 31 years after the fact, the FBI is still on the job
searching high and low with every bit of resources in their command to locate Jimmy Hoffa.

Never let it be said that our Homeland Security forces are not vigilant.

JWR contributor Greg Crosby, former creative head for Walt Disney publications, has written thousands of comics, hundreds of children's books, dozens of essays, and a
letter to his congressman. A freelance writer in Southern California, you may contact him by clicking here.